Benjamin Shapiro – WNDhttp://www.wnd.com
A Free Press For A Free People Since 1997Sat, 10 Dec 2016 03:20:32 +0000en-UShourly1https://wordpress.org/?v=4.6Obama energized by his anti-Americanismhttp://www.wnd.com/2010/04/140569/
Wed, 14 Apr 2010 00:00:00 +0000http://wp.wnd.com/?p=140569In February 1945, three world leaders – FDR, Stalin and Churchill – gathered in Yalta, in Crimea, to discuss the fate of post-war Europe. At that conference, FDR signed away half of Germany, all of Poland, enslavement of the German population to the Soviet Union. While the conference suggested that liberated countries would be granted free elections, no enforcement mechanism was put in place, so the Soviets effectively annexed every piece of land they occupied.

FDR insisted he had not been duped. “Poor Neville Chamberlain believed he could trust Hitler,” FDR said days after the conference. “He was wrong. But I don’t think I’m wrong about Stalin.” FDR was wrong about Stalin, of course. But he had reason to be wrong – he had been misinformed by his own supposed allies. Soviet agent Alger Hiss worked as part of the American delegation at Yalta; communist superspy Kim Philby and the rest of the so-called “Cambridge Five” funneled papers from the British and the Americans regarding their positions on Poland.

So it’s fair to let FDR off the hook, at least minimally, for Yalta.

Not so with President Obama. He is busily Yalta-ing the United States and her allies knowing full well that the free world will suffer for it.

Take, for example, President Obama’s recent nuclear arms reduction treaty with Russia. Obama championed it in order to set an example for the rest of the world: “With this agreement, the United States and Russia … send a clear signal that we intend to lead,” he said. “By upholding our own commitments under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, we strengthen our global efforts to stop the spread of these weapons, and to ensure that other nations meet their own responsibilities.” How will we ensure that other nations meet their own responsibilities? He does not say (shades of Yalta).

What’s worse, though, is the fact that Russia gained more than the United States did in this treaty deal – the United States effectively revoked her right to create any sort of missile defense shield for Europe. Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, front man for Vladimir Putin, told George Stephanopoulos on Sunday that if the U.S. pursued missile defense, Russia would pull out of the treaty forthwith. You can bet that President Obama will shelve missile defense as soon as possible based on the Russians’ baseless objections.

Even as President Obama hailed the deal as some sort of breakthrough for world relations, Russia maintained that it would not support heavy sanctions against Iran. Russia’s position completely undermines Obama’s credibility – it’s difficult to claim that arms-reduction agreement somehow creates a united front against Iran’s nuclear development when Russia refuses to stand up against Iranian nuclear development.

And that still wasn’t the worst of it – the very same week Obama signed the arms reduction deal, Russia backed a coup in Kyrgyzstan. One of Russia’s conditions for supporting the coup? The new government’s destruction of the American air base in Manas, a crucial U.S. strategic asset used heavily in the Afghanistan war.

Notably, the Obama administration has yet to take a position on the Kyrgyzstan situation, allowing the Russian-backed revolution to continue gaining ground. The Obama administration was not nearly as shy with regard to the fully constitutional change of power in Honduras – that was an outrage, a coup!

That’s no surprise, of course. President Obama only backs policies that hurt the United States and her allies. He seeks self-flagellation of America before the world; absolution for American imperialism can only be found in purposeful self-subversion. Obama feels that America and its allies must be whittled down to its proper size as quickly as possible.

In that spirit, Obama is hosting the Nuclear Security Summit this week. He already opened it by bowing to Chinese President Hu Jintao, hugging socialist Brazilian president Luiz Lula and pointing his finger angrily at Canadian prime minister and pro-Israel advocate Stephen Harper. He has alienated Israel to the point where they wouldn’t even show up – they suspect Obama will sandbag them rather than focusing on Iran. Obama has barred the media from all major meetings – no doubt he doesn’t want Americans to hear what he’s telling foreign leaders about us behind closed doors.

It would be comforting to say that President Obama is a victim of his own naivete and ego. There’s no doubt he loves hearing from human refuse like Medvedev that he is “a thinker,” unlike “other people” (read: George W. Bush). But there’s more to it than simple ego appeasement. There is a disturbing anti-Americanism that animates Obama and his policies. The Rev. Jeremiah Wright famously said, “God damn America.” God doesn’t have to. Obama’s doing it for him.

]]>Obama's plan to humble Americahttp://www.wnd.com/2010/04/138105/
Thu, 08 Apr 2010 00:00:00 +0000http://wp.wnd.com/?p=138105On April 6, 20-year-old Ty MacDowell led a march in Portland, Maine, designed to raise awareness of sexism. She did this by walking bare-breasted down the street with two dozen fellow women. MacDowell was shocked to learn that far from decreasing sexism, revealing her bosom drew hundreds of men with cameras. “I’m really upset by the men,” she moped, “watching it like it’s a parade.”

This is called the law of unintended consequences. Anyone with half a brain could foresee the consequences of MacDowell’s march – there’s a reason men spend years of their lives perusing the Internet for booby shots.

There are other applications of the law of unintended consequences, however, that are less obvious.

In the 1960s, liberals dramatically expanded the welfare state under the banner of Lyndon Baines Johnson’s Great Society. Johnson and his liberal allies created Welfare, the Job Corps, the Model Cities Program, Head Start, the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, Medicare, Medicaid and many other governmental make-work, pay-the-poor programs. Johnson referred to these programs as a “beautiful woman.” (Johnson was a serial womanizer, so that was his dearest metaphor.)

At the same time, Johnson was escalating spending in Vietnam; from 1965 to 1968, Johnson augmented the military budget by 25 percent. This frightened Johnson to no end. According to historian Robert D. Hormats, “Johnson frequently remarked to his assistant Joseph Califano that the massive financial demands of World War II had killed the New Deal and the increase in funding for the Korean War had killed Truman’s Fair Deal, and he was concerned a similar fate would befall the Great Society.” Vietnam was, in Johnson’s word, a “bitch.”

The beautiful woman and the bitch were fighting over the same tax dollars. Eventually, LBJ was forced to raise taxes dramatically to curtail the budget crisis that was destroying the dollar. In 1968, the same man who had created the massive social safety nets, comprising a huge portion of the federal budget, suddenly called for “fiscal restraint” and “responsible fiscal policy.” Not coincidentally, in that same speech, LBJ announced he would not run for re-election. Only a few years later, Democrats in Congress refused to fund the Vietnam War, instead choosing to continue funding the social programs LBJ had instituted.

In short, LBJ’s Great Society had two major short-term unintended consequences: First, the Great Society weakened us on the home front by foisting tax hikes and unsustainable debts on the American people; second, the Great Society weakened us abroad by sucking up cash needed to win the Vietnam War. The Great Society forced a choice between guns and butter, and the Democrats chose increasingly expensive butter, paid for by productive Americans.

LBJ could honestly claim that he had no idea his programs would do such immediate damage to the financial and military status of the country. After all, LBJ bought the Keynesian myth that FDR’s programs had spurred the economy and made us stronger on the military front.

President Obama knows better.

Obama’s decision to incur unthinkable new debts via gargantuan entitlement programs, to raise taxes in the midst of a depression, to intensify inflation to catastrophic proportions, is specifically calculated to effect the exact same two consequences as LBJ’s Great Society program. First, Obama wants to weaken us on the home front by “spreading the wealth around” in the name of equality. Second, Obama wants to use that aggravated economic weakness to undermine America’s foreign-policy standing around the world.

First, Obama’s real domestic agenda. He doesn’t care about economic expansion – this week, even as economic reports intensified general gloom, his economic hit man, Paul Volcker, talked about instituting European-type “value-added tax” (VAT). VATs are merely a long-winded way of dramatically exacerbating sales taxes, which would raise prices. Basic supply and demand dictates that raising prices will lower demand, leading to yet another economic spiral. That’s Obama’s goal – as Rahm Emanuel put it so succinctly, Obama is not one to let a good crisis go to waste.

Second, Obama wants to use our economic weakness to undermine our military status in the world. Obama believes the greatest threat to international security is American brutishness. He seeks to alleviate that brutishness by unilaterally cutting our nuclear arsenal, removing honest phrasing like “Islamic radicalism” from our national security documents, and setting egg timers for troop surges.

President Obama does not want a greater, more powerful America; he wants a smaller, more humble America. And he knows how to achieve it. He is not acting out the law of unintended consequences – he strives for the consequences. Unlike LBJ, Obama acts not out of ignorance, but insidiousness. Like LBJ in 1968, he must be made to pay the price.

]]>The hysteria of 'violent' right winghttp://www.wnd.com/2010/03/134413/
Wed, 31 Mar 2010 00:00:00 +0000http://wp.wnd.com/?p=134413One week after the passage of President Obama’s quasi-socialized health-care scheme, 54 percent of likely voters support repeal. And according to Frank Rich, each and every one of those voters is a budding Nazi.

“How curious that a mob fond of likening President Obama to Hitler knows so little about history that it doesn’t recognize its own small-scale mimicry of Kristallnacht,” Rich writes. “The weapon of choice for vigilante violence at congressional offices has been a brick hurled through a window. So far.”

It is Rich, naturally, who knows nothing about history; his ardent support of President Obama blinds him to the slander he has perpetrated on both Americans and Holocaust victims. Kristallnacht was a government-sponsored program of terror and murder in which 91 Jews were murdered, tens of thousands of Jews were thrown into concentration camps, 267 synagogues were razed to the ground, and Jewish businesses through German territories were destroyed and looted. It is despicable to compare one brick through a glass window with an organized campaign of slaughter and violence.

More than that, Kristallnacht was a case of the government persecuting its own citizens. It was not a spontaneous uprising of violent thugs, nor was it a Los Angeles riots-style melee. Kristallnacht was programmed from beginning to end by the Nazi regime. The basic truth is that socialized medicine – an attack on the private sector and on private individuals in the name of the collective – reflects Kristallnacht on a philosophical level far better than a nut hurling one brick through one window at Louise Slaughter’s office.

Rich is simply parroting the Obama administration’s latest meme: Tea partiers and anyone else who opposes the Obama program is racist, homophobic, un-American scum of the earth, violent in temperament and simple in mind. Rich, with all the subtlety of a nightstick upside the head, expresses the meme this way: “The conjunction of a black president and a female speaker of the House – topped off by a wise Latina on the Supreme Court and a powerful gay congressional committee chairman – would sow fears of disenfranchisement among a dwindling and threatened minority in the country no matter what policies were in play.” In other words, if the president were white, the speaker of the House male, Sonia Sotomayor a white male and Barney Frank a strapping heterosexual, the Obamacare plan would have gone through like clockwork.

Except that in 1993, white male Bill Clinton was president; Tom Foley, a white male, was speaker of the House; Clinton had just appointed a white female, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, to the Supreme Court; and a straight man, Henry Gonzalez, was chairman of the House Banking, Finance and Urban Affairs Committee. The American people rebelled against Clinton’s health-care system, and the Clinton administration talked routinely about the threat of violent right-wingers.

Is it just possible that this isn’t Kristallnacht, but another attempt by another Democratic president to avoid culpability for his political positions by playing the victim?

Or – and this is just as probable in a time when an unpopular administration has forced its will on an unwilling American populace – this isn’t Kristallnacht, but a quasi-Reichstag fire scenario in which all dissenters are silenced by an onslaught of media pressure and personal violence? The facts show that it is the left, not the tea partiers, who have engaged in substantial personal violence since President Obama’s election: an Obamacare supporter who bit off the finger of an Obamacare opponent in California; the beating of Kenneth Gladney, a black man who opposed the Obama agenda, by Service Employees International Union thugs; the death threats received on a regular basis by conservative opinion leaders. All of that is driven by the Obama administration, which personally attacks people like Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck, and tells its followers to “punch back twice as hard.”

The hysteria over the “violent” right wing is just that – hysteria. The true danger here comes not from the grass-roots right, but from the Astroturfed left, which is being orchestrated and trained by the Obama administration and its media minions to attack Americans who still believe in America’s founding principles.

]]>It's over – the fat lady has sunghttp://www.wnd.com/2010/03/131381/
Wed, 24 Mar 2010 00:00:00 +0000http://wp.wnd.com/?p=131381Meet Donna Simpson, of Old Bridge, N.J. Donna is a 42-year-old, presumably unemployed single mother with specific medical issues related to obesity. It is unclear whether she has health insurance. Barack Obama, Joe Biden, Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid probably think of Donna Simpson as a victim of the American health-insurance system, which didn’t provide her automatic coverage – and if it did provide her coverage, that coverage was probably increasingly expensive.

There’s a reason that Obama, Biden, Pelosi and Reid don’t use Simpson as one of their typical sob stories: Simpson weighs 604 pounds, and she’s trying to work her way up to 1,000 pounds so that she can make the “Guinness Book of World Records.” “This is a fantasy of mine,” Simpson told the New York Post. According to the Post, Simpson would love to hit 1,000 pounds by 2012, consuming a diet of 12,000 calories per day.

“My favorite food is sushi,” she told the UK’s Daily Mail, “but unlike others I can sit and eat 70 big pieces of sushi in one go. I do love cakes and sweet things; doughnuts are my favorite.”

How does she pay $750 per week for her food? She has a website where people can donate money to watch the hog feed herself. “I love eating, and people love watching me eat. It makes people happy, and I’m not harming anyone.”

Well, that used to be true. She wasn’t harming anyone because we weren’t paying for her (or, at least, we weren’t paying for her unless she had a heart attack and ended up in the emergency room).

Now we are paying for her. All of us. We’re paying for her because insurance companies in America are no longer allowed to charge her higher premiums due to her pre-existing medical condition (i.e. being a load). They’re no longer allowed to provide her coverage limits (i.e. limits on bypasses), and they’re no longer allowed to tailor a policy for her that leaves out preventive care (care she’ll never use since her goal is to be two Michael Moores).

If Simpson is smart (granted, a big if), she’ll simply pay a $750 fine and avoid buying health insurance. Then when she gets sick due to her grain elevator size, she’ll sign up for health insurance. The money she pays per year won’t come close to covering her care. That means we’ll cover it.

If this sounds like a bad idea, that’s because it is. It’s a horrible, terrible, anti-American idea. And it stems from the similarly awful idea that health care is a right. Once health care is defined as an individual right, society suddenly has an obligation to provide it. And society is made up of other individuals, who will have to pay for the irresponsible.

In fact, health care is not a right. Donna Simpson doesn’t have a right to force me to pay for her health care any more than I have a right to force her to pay for my electricity.

Having the opportunity to control your health (and your health care) is a right, however. Or at least, it was a right. Over the past few decades, health care in this country has moved from a patient-centric system to a government and insurance company-centric system. That’s due solely to government regulation – when medical care isn’t regulated, the price drops and the quality increases (just look at Lasik surgery, which generally isn’t covered by government programs or by health insurance programs). Free markets ensure rights, because rights are all about choice.

But the left doesn’t believe in true rights or true choice. True rights come with the responsibility to live with the consequences of your choices. The right to control your health comes with the responsibility to live with your choices. Donna Simpson has every right to turn herself into a human hippopotamus, but that action has certain consequences – namely, that she will pay for her own medical care.

The minute those consequences disappear, the right itself disappears, because rights without responsibilities are utterly unsustainable. It is only a matter of time before the government forces those like Donna Simpson to go on a Federal Diet Plan in order to “bend the cost curve,” forcing the rest of us to get on the Government Health Control bandwagon. The left burned down the village in order to save it; they destroyed our control of our own health in order to guarantee health coverage for everyone. Our dearest freedom is now in the hands of the collective – all to save Donna Simpson.

]]>The Obama Intifadahttp://www.wnd.com/2010/03/128417/
Wed, 17 Mar 2010 00:00:00 +0000http://wp.wnd.com/?p=128417President Obama’s health-care plan is swirling the drain. Americans don’t like it – the latest Rasmussen poll has just 43 percent of Americans in favor, with 53 percent opposed – and that dislike has the Obama administration suggesting that polls don’t actually mirror the will of the American people. “They’re waiting for us to act,” Obama told a crowd in Ohio on Monday. “They don’t want us reading polls. They want us to look and see what is the best thing for America.” This is paternalism of the highest order – he knows what’s better for us than we do ourselves.

So, what’s a failed president to do?

How about distract the American public by throwing an ally under the bus and starting a war in the Middle East?

When President Clinton was unhappy about the burgeoning Lewinsky scandal, he wagged the dog by hurling missiles at targets in Afghanistan and Sudan. At least those were legitimate targets.

When President Obama is unhappy about his inability to convince Americans to nationalize health care, he incentivizes Palestinian Arabs to violent uprising.

Supposedly, the latest Obama administration anti-Israel campaign is a response to the Israeli government’s decision to green-light 1,600 new housing units for Jews in East Jerusalem. Don’t believe it for a second. East Jerusalem is sovereign Israeli territory, and Israel has built housing for Jews there for the better part of four decades. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has repeatedly stated that construction in Jerusalem would not stop. There is nothing new here that should have shocked the Obama administration.

Yet not only did this decision supposedly shock the Obama administration, it also led virtually the entire Obama Cabinet to speak out against Israel. Joe Biden, who was in Israel when the decision was made by Israel, ripped Israel for undermining “trust” – whatever that means in a situation where one side’s trust entails denying the existence of the other side. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said the United States was “insulted” by Israel’s decision, a vomitrocious statement that arrogantly assumes that Israel’s construction policies must be geared toward pleasing the Obama administration. George Mitchell, the simpering “special envoy for Middle East peace,” canceled a trip to Israel to show his displeasure.

Make no mistake – the timing of the latest Obama-Israel spat is purposeful on the Obama administration’s part. This response was far too well-rehearsed for it to have been triggered by something equivalent to a Housing and Urban Development dispute in the United States. You would think that Biden, the presiding officer of the Senate, would be useful during a health-care debate. You would think that Obama could send Mitchell or Hillary or someone remotely qualified on Middle Eastern politics. But that’s not what Obama wanted. Obama sent Biden to Israel on March 8, even as the House and Senate looked for a way to ram through the health-care bill, because he wanted Biden’s visit to trigger headlines.

And trigger headlines it did. Obama has been pressing Israel since his inauguration to concede to Palestinian Arab terrorists; he even sent his Jewish “Benedict Arnold” Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee annual conference last year to inform Jews that if they didn’t appease Palestinian Arab terrorists, the Obama administration would allow Iran to go nuclear. The Obama administration’s anti-Israel ire is nothing new.

What is new is the level of the Obama administration’s rhetoric, which has brought American-Israeli relations to the lowest point since 1956. Even as the Obama administration condemned Israel for supposedly stalling the Orwellian “peace process,” Palestinian Arabs were rioting in a Hamas-sponsored “day of rage” to protest the reopening of a Jerusalem synagogue ripped down by Arabs in 1948. The synagogue is located in the Jewish Quarter of the Old City of Jerusalem, sovereign Israeli territory by any estimation. Yet we have not heard a peep from the Obama administration about the Arab riots over their wish to establish Judenrein in Jewish Jerusalem proper.

On Tuesday, hundreds of Arabs throughout Jerusalem burned tires and threw rocks at border guards. An Israeli policeman was shot in East Jerusalem. What do we hear from the Obama administration? Silence. This is the Obama Intifada. It is he who has suggested that the Palestinian Arabs have legitimate grievances, that Israel is the victimizer, and that the United States will stand aside and allow violent atrocities by Arabs to go forward without comment. He wants this Intifada, and he’s got it.

The Obama Intifada will serve a dual purpose: it will knock health care off the front pages, and it will provide a “crisis” for Obama to solve. If a few Jews get killed, Obama doesn’t truly care. What’s a few eggs if you’re frying up a socialized-health-care omelet? What’s a few Jews if you can win another Nobel Peace Prize?

Nothing, to President Obama. All that matters is his personal victory, even if America and her allies lose.

]]>Ugliness on 'The View' strikes againhttp://www.wnd.com/2010/03/127484/
Wed, 10 Mar 2010 00:00:00 +0000http://wp.wnd.com/?p=127484On Sunday night, Sandra Bullock won Best Actress at the 82nd Academy Awards for her portrayal of gun-toting Republican Leigh Anne Tuohy in “The Blind Side.” “The Blind Side” is essentially a high-class, made-for-TV movie based on the true story of the Touhy family’s adoption of impoverished and abandoned black teenager Michael Oher, who would go on to play as an offensive lineman in the NFL. The movie is heartwarming, and Bullock is excellent in the part. She clearly deserved her Oscar.

Leave it to the gals on “The View” to tear apart this heartwarming story. Vanessa Williams, sitting in for Whoopi Goldberg, trashed the film, even though she’d never seen it. Williams said: “It brings up a theme for black folks of ‘OK, here’s another white family that has saved the day.’ Another black story that has to have a white person come in and lift them up. And I’m not saying it’s not true and it didn’t happen, it’s one of those ‘do I really want to save the same theme again?'” Joy Behar, the ugly liberal harridan who thinks genital jokes demonstrate extraordinary wit, quickly sided with Williams.

Somehow liberals get away with detritus like this on a regular basis. If someone voiced moral doubt about a movie depicting a black family adopting a white child, they’d be raked over the coals – and rightfully so. Transracial adoption should be seen as the greatest hallmark of the tremendous racial acceptance that now dominates our culture. But extreme liberals – and black extreme liberals in particular – can get away with bashing transracial adoption because they rely on the lexicon of political correctness, which suggests that “cultural autonomy” is threatened by such adoptions.

In 1972, for example, the National Association of Black Social Workers stated that white families adopting black kids amounted to “cultural genocide.” They have now removed that phrase from their critique of transracial adoption, but they maintain the position that such adoptions should be discouraged. The argument goes something like this: Black culture is distinct and separate from white culture. If black children are brought up within white culture, they lose their heritage. Therefore, black children should preferably be brought up by black parents, no matter the other qualifications for good parenting.

To that end, many judges have ruled on an individual basis that certain white parents cannot adopt black children. In August 2006, the New York Times reported on Nick and Emily Mebruer, a white couple living in Lebanon, Mo., who wanted to adopt a black child. The white judge initially ruled that they were “uniquely unqualified” to parent a black child because of their “limited interaction with black people and culture.” Another couple, Martina Brockway and Mike Timble, a white Chicago couple, wanted to adopt a black child. In preparation for that adoption, the Times happily reported, they had decorated their 3-year-old natural daughter’s room with “Black-themed children’s books like ‘Please, Baby, Please’ by the filmmaker Spike Lee and his wife, Tonya Lewis Lee.”

The pushback against transracial adoption relies on false notions of racial identity. Clearly, white parents who adopt black children need to inform their children about the unique history blacks have in America as well as the challenges they will sometimes face from the now-rare individuals who mistreat based on race. But the idea that whites and blacks in America do not have shared morals, shared ideals and shared visions is not just mistaken – it is pernicious.

Blacks and whites alike share love of freedom promised in the Declaration of Independence; blacks and whites alike share love of family and faith. Those are far deeper values than the frivolous trappings of rap or jazz or Spike Lee that the left would have us designate as “black culture.”

Living with values is not race specific. The Touhys and Michael Oher are evidence of that fact. Randall Kennedy, a black professor at Harvard Law School, sums it up well: “The emergence of ‘rainbow families’ formed by adoptions is a fascinating, poignant, encouraging landmark in the maturation of American race relations.” Scorn for such families in the name of cultural segregation is not just destructive to the children who could be adopted into such families, but it is also destructive of American values as a whole.

Collins Tuohy, the Tuohy’s daughter who was the same age as Michael Oher when the Tuohy family took him in, recently did an interview with the UK Telegraph. She said her fear was that people would always see Michael as “‘the black kid that lived with the white family.’ And he is way so much more than that.” He is more than that because America is more than that, no matter what Vanessa Williams thinks.

]]>Jim Bunning is a herohttp://www.wnd.com/2010/03/126791/
Wed, 03 Mar 2010 00:00:00 +0000http://wp.wnd.com/?p=126791Sen. Jim Bunning, R-Ky., is the most unpopular man in the Senate, according to his colleagues. “Today we have a clear-cut example to show the American people just what’s wrong with Washington, D.C.,” said Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash. “He’s hurting the American people,” spat Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine.

What is Bunning doing that deserves such reproof? He has the audacity to stall a 30-day extension of unemployment and COBRA health-care benefits on the grounds that the extension would add $10 billion to the federal deficit, which is already expected to hit $1.6 trillion this year. Majority Leader Sen. Harry Reid, D-Nev., wants to pass that extension unanimously in order to expedite the process; Bunning has refused, correctly pointing out that the Democrats passed a “pay as you go” policy that was supposed to make spending deficit neutral, and that now they’re tossing that policy out the window for political convenience. Bunning has even suggested a way to make the extension deficit neutral: Take money out of the unspent chunk of the Obama stimulus package and use it to fund the extension. Democrats have refused.

Here’s the truth: Bunning is a hero, and his senatorial critics are villains. That goes for Republicans as well as Democrats. Bunning’s opponents are liars and hypocrites of the highest order. The Democrats have no intention of lowering the deficit or abiding by “pay-go,” and this only proves it. President Obama set up a joke commission supposedly designed to restore fiscal responsibility (he appointed noted spendthrift and Service Employees International Union President Andy Stern), but at the same time, Obama’s mouthpiece, Robert Gibbs, is informing the American public that “This is an emergency situation. Hundreds of thousands have been left in the lurch. … I don’t know how you negotiate the irrational.”

The Democrats and Republicans who oppose Bunning want fiscal responsibility, unless it actually requires them to act fiscally responsible. Unless it’s an “emergency.” Here’s the question: If we can’t trust legislators to be fiscally responsible during economic emergencies, how can we trust them to be fiscally responsible during economic swells?

But there’s something even more insidious going on here than simple political gamesmanship. Too many Americans now believe that the checks they receive every month from the unemployment office – like the checks they get from the welfare office, from Medicare, from Social Security – are inalienable rights. They are not.

Our politicians and our press have become too loose with “rights talk.” Everything is now a “right.” The “right” to work. The “right” to health care. The “right” to a own a home. Each and every one of these “rights” is actually a restriction on liberty.

Our Constitution provides for liberty because it focuses on true rights – negative rights. Negative rights are rights created by restraining others from treating you in a certain way. The right to free speech exists because we restrict the government from encroaching upon free speech. The right to bear arms exists because we restrict the government from taking away guns (or should, in any case). The right to life exists because we restrict citizens from murder.

Positive rights are something else entirely: They are rights created by forcing others to engage in certain behavior. The right to work, for example, requires someone else to give you a job. The right to health care requires someone else to provide health care for you. These are not true rights, but tyrannical impositions, taking from Party A and giving to Party B.

No country that focuses more on positive rights than negative rights can remain truly free for long. Negative rights provide a space in which individuals can pursue happiness; positive rights impose crushing burdens on some for the benefit of others.

Sen. Bunning is standing up for negative rights – the same underlying rights that provide the framework for our system of government. His opponents are standing up for positive rights, suggesting that some of us, the employed, owe something to the unemployed – or worse, that future generations owe something to today’s unemployed.

Everyone sympathizes with the unemployed, of course. But many of those who are living off the unemployment program affected by Bunning’s stand have been on the unemployment lines for over a year at this point – at minimum, everyone affected has been on unemployment for at least six months. We simply cannot keep extending unemployment benefits indefinitely by calling on imaginary “rights” derived from depriving others. That is not only a betrayal of those who must pay, but a betrayal of our founding principles.

]]>Obama's terrorist-shielding envoyhttp://www.wnd.com/2010/02/126048/
Wed, 24 Feb 2010 00:00:00 +0000http://wp.wnd.com/?p=126048On Feb. 20, 2003, professor Sami Al-Arian of the University of South Florida was arrested by the Department of Justice for his leadership of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, a designated terrorist organization. Al-Arian was a radical supporter of Islamic terrorism, a man who announced at rallies that he sought “victory to Islam” and “death to Israel.” He created the organization in America, designed, at least in part, to bring terrorists to U.S. soil.

On Sept. 5, 2004, law student Rashad Hussain spoke at a Muslim Student Association (MSA) conference. The MSA is in and of itself a troublesome organization, which has been repeatedly linked to terror – but that wasn’t the main problem. The main problem was Hussain’s speech, in which he explicitly defended Al-Arian, calling his prosecution “a sad commentary on our legal system … a travesty of justice … [one incident in a] common pattern … of politically-motivated prosecutions.”

And on Feb. 14, 2010, President Barack Obama appointed Rashad Hussain to his Special Envoy to the Organization of Islamic Conference.

When news broke of Hussain’s 2004 statements, Hussain immediately called reports mistaken, explaining that he had not uttered those words. Unfortunately for Hussain, Politico.com quickly recovered a tape of the MSA conference. Hussain then backtracked, stating, “I made clear at the time that I was not commenting on the allegations themselves. The judicial process has now concluded, and I have full faith in its outcome.” Very reassuring.

Unsurprisingly, the Obama administration is standing by its man, the same way they originally stood by communism-friendly Green Czar Van Jones. This is troubling not only because Obama consistently elevates those who champion anti-American causes, including Jones and Hussain, but also because of his original selection of these people for powerful posts.

The simple fact is that Hussain is not a problem merely because of his 2004 comments. He is a problem because of what he believes about the Muslim world in general.

His views are laid out in a report he did for the Brookings Institution, entitled “Reformulating the Battle of Ideas: Understanding the Role of Islam in Counterterrorism Policy.” First, he states that those in the United States ought to drop the term “Islamic terrorism.” “The terms ‘Islamic terrorism’ and ‘Islamic extremism’ validate the terrorist claim that their ideology is, in fact, rooted in Islam,” Hussain writes. For the same reason, he wants to end the use of the terms “jihadist” and “Islamofascist.” This is pure bunkum, implying as it does that the Muslim world takes its cues on how to interpret Islam from Christians in the United States. But Hussain knows that. His intent isn’t to protect the United States – it’s to protect Muslims globally (including radical Muslims) from having to face additional scrutiny at the airports or in the press.

Hussain’s argument quickly becomes more pernicious. He argues that Americans should quit asking the Muslim world to value freedom and democracy, and instead focus on working with non-terrorist imams to convert Muslims to a non-terrorist version of Islam. In practice, this means that the U.S. should “work with Muslim governments, religious leaders … on the ground in the Muslim world.” In short, cash and public relations help for governments like the Saudis, and imams sponsored by those governments. Again, this is ludicrous on its face – the idea that Muslims around the world will accept American non-Muslims or Christian-backed Muslims preaching about the true meaning of Islam is laughable. We don’t have the legitimacy to preach about Islam. We do have the legitimacy to preach about freedom and democracy.

Putting the most benign spin on Hussain’s writings, he is a Muslim who hopes to convert terrorist-leaning Muslims to non-terrorist Islam. But it is not enough to convert them to non-terrorist Islam if that version of Islam is also antidemocratic and fascistic. It is far too easy for non-terrorist, freedom-and-democracy-rejecting Muslims to slip over into terrorist Islam. Hussain provides the best example of that – after all, he himself slipped over that line in 2004 by endorsing the terrorist Al-Arian and ripping the U.S. justice system.

President Obama clearly agrees with Hussain’s plans for the Muslim world. But we in the real world do not have the luxury of pretending that such plans are either realistic or morally righteous. They are neither. They justify continued repression and evil in the Muslim world, and they leave us wide open to attack in the Western world by failing to properly recognize the enemy.

]]>When liberals take over our brainshttp://www.wnd.com/2010/02/125355/
Wed, 17 Feb 2010 00:00:00 +0000http://wp.wnd.com/?p=125355Most people have three varying images of psychology. One is of a scientist poring over notes derived from a patient – the Robin Williams-in-“Awakenings” brain specialist. The second is of a patient, lying on a divan, telling a psychologist stories about her parents’ unstable marriage – the therapist. The third is of a patient and her psychologist in flagrante delicto.

The truth is somewhere between the first and second images. Psychology is a field that is part science, part hand-holding and lots of speculation. The truth is that we know very little about the inner workings of the mind, and even less about abnormalities of the mind.

That inherent vagary is troubling because politics tends to fill the gap where scientific knowledge is thin. Take, for example, the latest edits to the Diagnostic and Statistical of Mental Disorders, or DSM. Every couple decades, the psychology establishment rewrites this basic diagnostic textbook for the field, which is analogous to a “Gray’s Anatomy” for the mind. And every couple decades, political correctness ensures that true science of the mind is obscured in favor of liberal niceties.

Back in 1974, for example, the DSM removed “homosexuality” from its list of mental illnesses. There was no actual scientific reason to do so – homosexual men still have higher rates of suicide and depression than heterosexuals, homosexual women still have higher rates of substance abuse, homosexuals are statistically deviant (a crucial issue when discussing normality in any statistical sense), and homosexuals are definitionally incapable of natural reproduction. But due to pressure group influence, homosexuality was out.

The DSM then replaced homosexuality with “ego-dystonic homosexuality,” which they defined as persistent lack of heterosexual arousal and distress from homosexual arousal. That wasn’t good enough, either, and in 1986, the DSM dumped it completely.

What of the countless thousands who wish they could be treated for homosexuality? They don’t matter, since the gay movement says that anyone with homosexual feelings should learn to be happy with those feelings – a position they don’t take with regard to men who think they are women and vice versa.

The current DSM is no better. It, too, reflects a not-so-subtle liberal bias. The definition of pedophilia, for example, has been changed substantially. While the old definition stated that you had to be at least 16 years of age and had to molest a child to be diagnosed with pedophilia, the new definition states that you must be 18 years old and molest “two or more different children.” That’s right – pedophiles now get one freebie before being diagnosed with pedophilia. If this isn’t defining deviancy down, it’s difficult to see what would be.

On a similar note, the DSM has redefined gender identity disorder, or GID – or rather, they’ve renamed it. Gender identity disorder is a mental condition where members of one sex think they’re in the wrong bodies. The DSM now calls this condition “gender incongruity,” explaining that the new term “better reflects the core of the problem: an incongruence between, on the one hand, what identity one experiences and/or expresses and, on the other hand, how one is expected to live based on one’s assigned gender.”

Clearly, this is propaganda – gender is not assigned at birth. It is assigned with biology; as scientific studies have amply shown, males and females have significant differences in brain biology. But the DSM isn’t concerned with actual science – they’re more concerned with the issue that “many [transgendered people] very clearly indicated their rejection of the GID term because, in their view, it contributes to the stigmatization of their condition.” This is inane. Sufferers of a condition do not get to rename that condition at will to spare their feelings. Otherwise, kleptomaniacs would be able to call themselves “friendly borrowers.”

The left consistently argues that the right wants to shut down science. But when the left has an agenda, it ignores science at will, whether with regard to global warming, abortion or mental health. Psychology is a young and still-evolving field, but the more it subjects itself to the whims of political actors, the less legitimate it will be.

]]>The Green Police take overhttp://www.wnd.com/2010/02/124719/
Wed, 10 Feb 2010 19:16:00 +0000http://wp.wnd.com/?p=124719The most interesting element of the Super Bowl wasn’t the Super Bowl. It was an advertisement for the Audi A3 TDI. The commercial depicted uniformed officials arresting Americans for, among other offenses, asking for plastic bags at the grocery, throwing away batteries, failing to compost an orange peel and installing incandescent light bulbs. “Green Police,” announces one of the green-clad fascisti. “You picked the wrong day to mess with the ecosystem, plastic boy.” Believe it or not, this wasn’t a parody of environmentalism gone wacko – it was a celebration of it. The end of the commercial informed viewers that by driving the Audi A3, they could heal their souls: “Green has never felt so right.”

Audi confirmed that the ad wasn’t designed to undermine environmental radicalism. “The Green Police are a humorous group of individuals that have joined forces in an effort to collectively help guide consumers to make the right decision when it comes to the environment,” explains the Audi website. “They’re not here to judge, merely to guide these decisions.” By “guide,” Audi presumably means “punish.”

This would be funny if it weren’t frightening. San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom twittered, “Ok … That ‘green police’ Audi commercial hits home.” There’s a reason it hits home – San Francisco currently requires that citizens compost their food waste. The punishment for violation? Up to a $500 fine for businesses. On a national scale, President Obama pledged in his State of the Union Address to pass “a comprehensive energy and climate bill with incentives that will finally make clean energy the profitable kind of energy in America.” The actual results: punitive fines on carbon emissions, higher electric costs and lower standards of living.

The environmentalist frenzy overtaking the Democratic Party and its left allies is just one symptom of a burgeoning anti-democratic wave among liberals. Even as the deep green crowd pushes forward with its anti-technology, anti-liberty agenda, first lady Michelle Obama insists that we now police what inner-city kids eat for dinner. Her “anti-obesity” initiative, spearheaded at LetsMove.gov, suggests that it is our responsibility to “ensure that all families have access to healthy, affordable food in their communities.” What if not all families want healthy food? What if they prefer McDonald’s? Surely the Food Police follows hot on the heels of the Green Police – already, liberal politicians are floating “fat taxes” as punishments for businesses that market unhealthy products.

The anti-democratic wave continues with the White House’s utter disdain for anyone who disagrees with them on foreign policy. John Brennan, assistant to the president and deputy national security adviser for homeland security and counterterrorism, suggested this week that “Politically motivated criticism and unfounded fear-mongering only serve the goals of al-Qaida.” Hey, wait a second – didn’t dissent used to be patriotic?

Then there are the White House’s media lackeys, contemptible pseudo-intellectuals like Paul Krugman, who put on the soundtrack to “Apocalypse Now” and wrote this: “We’ve always known that America’s reign as the world’s greatest nation would eventually end. … The truth is that given the state of American politics, the way the Senate works is no longer consistent with a functioning government.” That’s the ticket! When the Dear Leader is in trouble, liberals are eager to dump one of the foundational institutions of republican governance.

Some of Krugman’s friends go even further. Kurt Andersen of New York Magazine wrapped himself in his petticoats and argued that “now we have a country absolutely teeming with irregular passions and artful misrepresentations, whipped up to an unprecedented pitch and volume. … Just as the founders feared, American democracy has gotten way too democratic.” No, dunce. The founders feared that the masses would vote themselves the wealth of others and dismantle fundamental moral values. They set up a gridlocked system in order to prevent the country from becoming too Democratic, not too democratic.

The left is crying out for a friendly tyranny, whether it springs from the holsters of the Green Police, the Food Police or the Obama administration. Whenever there is backlash against their agenda, their first solution is to dismiss the people. To that end, we the people are characterized as stupid, angry and easily manipulated. No doubt, we the people are stupid or angry or easily manipulated sometimes. But we are still the people. And we the people aren’t made to be ruled by the iron fist of the know-it-all know-nothings who now occupy our nation’s editorial boards and highest offices.